Kanye West gets shut down by TMZ employee after saying slavery 'sounds like a choice'

Kanye West stopped by TMZ Live on Tuesday to presumably defend his support for Donald Trump, but he may have only dug himself a deeper hole within the black community. During an incoherent hourlong rant, West said slavery was a choice.

“You hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” West said. “Like, you was there for 400 years and it’s all y’all?” West also doubled down on his love for a man many see as racist, saying, “I’ve never been into politics. I just love Trump. That’s my boy.”

He also said he was high on drugs when he deleted his tweets about Trump after meeting with the president-elect shortly after the 2016 election. West said, “Two days before I was in the hospital, I was on opioids. I was addicted to opioids. I had plastic surgery because I was trying to look good for y’all. I got liposuction because I didn’t want y’all to call me fat like y’all called Rob (Kardashian) at the wedding, and made him fly home before me and Kim got married.”

Kanye’s vocal support of Trump hasn’t come without its share of dangers. On Sunday, Snoop Dogg’s cousin, rapper Daz Dillinger, put out a now-deleted video on Instagram calling for a “Crip alert,” ordering Crips gang members to attack West if they see him. But West found a silver lining even in this: The gang members were told to beat him up, not to kill him.

West said, “They wanted to beat me up, I said, ‘That’s great. They are my brothers. They love me. They don’t want nothing to happen to Ye. They just want to beat some sense into me.’ I dove Daz. I love the Crips. I love the Bloods. I love everybody.”

West may say he loves everybody, but after his comment about slavery being a choice, not everyone at TMZ was loving him. One employee, Van Lathan, stood up to the rap star, saying, “We have to deal with the marginalization that has come from the 400 years of slavery that you said, for our people, was a choice. Every day we have to walk into that truth while you choose to say things that, to be honest with you … are nonsensical.” Lathan, who admitted that West inspired him to be more than he was, then said, “Frankly, I am disappointed, I am appalled, and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something, to me, that is not real.”